Biobanking in rare disorders

Abstract

Biobanks are collections of biomaterials with associated data. Biobanking is an essential tool to provide access to high quality human biomaterial for fundamental and translational research. Research for rare disorders benefits from the provision of human biomaterials through biobanks, and each human sample from a person with a rare disorder has a high value as it may hold the key to answer an important research question. Transnational cooperation in biobanking is an important catalyst to share limited resources and achieve optimal outcomes as in other areas of rare disorder research. Networks of biobanks aim to assure common practices and quality standards, and facilitate access to rare disorder biomaterials for the scientific community. © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010.